Google SEO Legacy 1.4.1

[frostschutz]

Google SEO only supports UTF-8, I don't recommend using it (much less changing it) for another charset.

[MenthiX]

Very nice plugin, something I was looking for a while ago. Some feedback from my first few days of using it...


1) The cache does not seem to be cleared completely as needed when changing Google SEO URL settings.

I ran into a few strange issues which were eventually fixed by manually clearing all possibly related MyBB cache:
* At one point I was playing around with the punctuation characters (adding and removing characters to this setting). I removed "!" from the punctuation characters and added it back later, but when browsing the forums some URLs still showed the "!" characters, resulting in an error when you click one of those URLs.
* Another problem I had was all the new threads created showed the uniquifier, even while the thread title was surely unique already.

Both of those problems were fixed by doing the following in order:
* Save Google SEO URL settings
* Disable and enable Google SEO
* Rebuild all MyBB cache
* Empty the google_seo SQL table (through phpMyAdmin)
* Clear the browser cache
I'm sure this is overkill, but only saving the changes caused some problems while these steps fixed everything. Everybody having similar problems may want to try this too. Maybe you could do some of these steps automatically in your next version (as far as they are needed).


2) I tried using slashes in my URL structure, but this doesn't seem to be an option?

Code:

# Google SEO URL settings
forum/{$url}/
thread/{$url}/
nieuws/{$url}/
gebruiker/{$url}/
kalender/{$url}/
event/{$url}/

# .htaccess
RewriteRule ^forum/([^./]+)/$ forumdisplay.php?google_seo_forum=$1 [L,QSA,NC]
RewriteRule ^thread/([^./]+)/$ showthread.php?google_seo_thread=$1 [L,QSA,NC]
RewriteRule ^nieuws/([^./]+)/$ announcements.php?google_seo_announcement=$1 [L,QSA,NC]
RewriteRule ^gebruiker/([^./]+)/$ member.php?action=profile&google_seo_user=$1 [L,QSA,NC]
RewriteRule ^kalender/([^./]+)/$ calendar.php?google_seo_calendar=$1 [L,QSA,NC]
RewriteRule ^event/([^./]+)/$ calendar.php?action=event&google_seo_event=$1 [L,QSA,NC]

The slashes aren't recognized very well by MyBB:


When manually changing the slashes the page does load but MyBB thinks it's in another folder:


Is this something that could be fixed in the future, or is a URL structure like this not an option?
A dot (".") in the URLs doesn't seem possible either, when you remove this from the punctuation characters all URLs with a dot in it result in a 404 error. Technically dots in a URL shouldn't be a problem AFAIK. Does it require a modification to the .htaccess rules?


3) Some templates don't use the Google SEO URLs:




4) I didn't enable 404 and sitemap yet. I already use my own custom error page, so I don't think I'll be using 404. The sitemap is interesting though. But I'm a bit concerned as it seems the map is generated evertytime it is accessed. This could add quite some load on bigger forums. Do you cache the sitemap in any way?

[sergi6666]

the same problem also i think we can use it the others database.You can say things that must be changed to us!

[frostschutz]

(03-17-2009 01:00 AM)MenthiX Wrote:  * At one point I was playing around with the punctuation characters (adding and removing characters to this setting). I removed "!" from the punctuation characters and added it back later, but when browsing the forums some URLs still showed the "!" characters, resulting in an error when you click one of those URLs.

The URLs only get updated when either no URL exists yet for an item, or when you access the item. Clicking the old URL should not result in an error though, instead it should just redirect you to the new one. Punctuation is critical however since many characters have a special meaning in URLs.

MenthiX Wrote:* Another problem I had was all the new threads created showed the uniquifier, even while the thread title was surely unique already.

Did this happen with the 1.0.2 version? Because the older version had a bug where Google SEO did not reclaim old URLs. When removing the uniquifier did you end up on a 404 / invalid thread page?

MenthiX Wrote:* Save Google SEO URL settings
* Disable and enable Google SEO
* Rebuild all MyBB cache
* Clear the browser cache

None of this should affect how Google SEO works. Unless you uninstall, that'd clear the google_seo table.

MenthiX Wrote:* Empty the google_seo SQL table (through phpMyAdmin)

This way you lose all information about Google SEO URLs (including redirects of old, renamed URLs). You shouldn't ever do this while using Google SEO.

MenthiX Wrote:2) I tried using slashes in my URL structure, but this doesn't seem to be an option?

Slashes are currently not supported; stock MyBB has all in one directory so MyBB uses relative links everywhere, which stop working as soon as you use anything with folders. You need to add a <base> tag to your head to tell the browser which directory to use instead of the URL folder, it's not a very nice solution.

But I'll see if I can remove the / escapes in the next version, so you can use slashes if you so desire.

Quote:A dot (".") in the URLs doesn't seem possible either, when you remove this from the punctuation characters all URLs with a dot in it result in a 404 error. Technically dots in a URL shouldn't be a problem AFAIK. Does it require a modification to the .htaccess rules?

The .htaccess rules don't match the dot (or slash for that matter) by default, i.e. the [^./] part in the rule means: do not match dot or slash. This is default behaviour for several reasons; slashes cause problems, it's not a good idea to let users create URLs that contain several slashes, since slashes are directories, so if you have an url like some/site///////// usually you'd expect that those double slashes are superfluous and it's identical to some/site/ which wouldn't be true if you allowed slashes in URLs. Dots are used for file extensions, so in the standard scheme if you allowed dots in the URL you could have users create URL endings like .jpg or .xml or .mpeg or .wav which would confuse users into thinking that this link leads to a picture / sound / movie file instead of a simple thread.

Another problem is that your htaccess rules mustn't collide with the MyBB friendly URL scheme (thread-12345.html) unless you don't want to be able to redirect from / to those URLs. So if you allow someone to create an URL like thread-12345.html the .htaccess won't know wether that means the google seo URL or the MyBB friendly URL, which is a problem because URLs must be unique at all times.

MenthiX Wrote:3) Some templates don't use the Google SEO URLs:

I hook directly into the get_*_link() API that MyBB itself uses to create its own URLs. Anything that uses this API, uses Google SEO URLs. Anything that doesn't use this API, doesn't use Google SEO URLs. I can't do anything about it except telling MyBB authors to use their own API everywhere (which they currently don't do, for example multipage links) as well as plugin authors to use this API instead of reimplementing the same logic on their own.

Quote:4) I didn't enable 404 and sitemap yet. I already use my own custom error page, so I don't think I'll be using 404.

Not sure what your custom error page does, but you don't have to use the 404 custom error page of Google SEO if you don't like it. Maybe you're still interested in having the error pages of MyBB as 404 code as well as the Google 404 widget.

MenthiX Wrote:The sitemap is interesting though. But I'm a bit concerned as it seems the map is generated evertytime it is accessed. This could add quite some load on bigger forums. Do you cache the sitemap in any way?

No. But it's split into several pages (similar to how your forums are split into several pages), and even though there are 1000 Google SEO URLs on each page this data is all fetched in a single query. There's not much point in caching it. Or rather, the whole point is not caching it so it's 100% up to date whenever Google chooses to access the Sitemap. It shouldn't cause 'quite some load', far from it. Plus the items in the Sitemap are sorted by date, so if something changes in your forum (a new thread is created), it will change only the last page of the Sitemap, so if Google looks at the timestamps of the sitemap it will see that it only has to fetch the last page, and not the whole thing.

(03-17-2009 07:45 AM)sergi6666 Wrote:  the same problem also i think we can use it the others database.You can say things that must be changed to us!

I don't understand.

[cybertooth]

I'm a bit confuse to this one ..
isnt it mybb1.4 already seo friendly..

is it really advisable to use this one?

anyone out there who finds this plugin more seo friendly than the one
we have at 1.4?
if it is then im going to use it.

[MattRogowski]

The point of it is to be more SEO friendly, yes. I image the names of the threads and forums in the URLs, plus the other things it does, helps with SEO.

[frostschutz]

Compared to the stock MyBB search engine friendly URLs, there are two major differences.

1) replace the ID with names, i.e. when you see an URL "thread-46423.html" you have absolutely no idea what it is until you click on it, whereas an URL "Thread-Google-SEO" will tell you what the thread is all about before you even click on it. Google recommends using these kinds of talking URLs in their SEO starter guide.

2) avoid double content. Stock MyBB friendly URLs include dynamic parameters into the static URL part, so you do not only have thread-46423.html but also thread-46423-page-1.html or thread-46423-post-322448.html or thread-46423-newpost.html and so on and so forth. Plus of course showthread.php?tid=46423 also works.

For Google all of these URLs have different names but actually lead to the very same page. According to the SEO starter guide it's better to leave those dynamic parameters actually in the dynamic part of the URL because then Google can tell more easily which parameters actually make a difference in content.

Google SEO gives one name to each item only, and leaves everything else in the dynamic part, and redirects other names (showthread.php, thread-x.html) to their currently valid name.

This plugin doesn't solve all SEO problems for you; it just tries to make things better than stock MyBB. For me the main motivation of writing this plugin wasn't only SEO but also give nicer looking URLs to the users.

[MenthiX]

(03-17-2009 08:31 AM)frostschutz Wrote:  Did this happen with the 1.0.2 version? Because the older version had a bug where Google SEO did not reclaim old URLs. When removing the uniquifier did you end up on a 404 / invalid thread page?

Yes, it was on 1.0.2. I didn't try removing the uniquifier. The problem is solved for now though, I'll let you know if it happens again.

frostschutz Wrote:None of this should affect how Google SEO works. Unless you uninstall, that'd clear the google_seo table.

It did magically solve the problems I was having though . But I did clear the google_seo table, so that could be it. I understand now that's not a wise thing to do (see below).

frostschutz Wrote:This way you lose all information about Google SEO URLs (including redirects of old, renamed URLs). You shouldn't ever do this while using Google SEO.

I see. It isn't a problem for me at this point though, since I've just been using it for a few days there are hardly any renamed threads yet, if any.

frostschutz Wrote:Not sure what your custom error page does, but you don't have to use the 404 custom error page of Google SEO if you don't like it. Maybe you're still interested in having the error pages of MyBB as 404 code as well as the Google 404 widget.

It's not that I don't like it, but my current 404 pages are already themed to match my forum's style, include Google's widget, and return the proper status code. Sounds like they are practically the same .

frostschutz Wrote:No. But it's split into several pages (similar to how your forums are split into several pages), and even though there are 1000 Google SEO URLs on each page this data is all fetched in a single query. There's not much point in caching it. Or rather, the whole point is not caching it so it's 100% up to date whenever Google chooses to access the Sitemap. It shouldn't cause 'quite some load', far from it. Plus the items in the Sitemap are sorted by date, so if something changes in your forum (a new thread is created), it will change only the last page of the Sitemap, so if Google looks at the timestamps of the sitemap it will see that it only has to fetch the last page, and not the whole thing.

Alright, that's reassuring. I'll give it a try.


Thanks for the replies.

[frostschutz]

1.0.3 is released, fixes the bad URL for punctuation only items issue, adds (optional, not recommended) support for slashes in URLs, and adds a debug option to Redirect for those who are seeing redirect problems (please give the debug info in your report, thanks!)

[okitai]

OK. Finally got it to work for me. This plugin is wonderful when fallowing the instructions.
My only problem is when I click the last post, showing in a forum on the index, at the end of the address I see: "?pid=4#pid4" - I'm not sure what the number '4' stands for (but it's probably the thread's tid). Can this be removed? I would like to see a clean address.

Ori...